A recurrent concept in early-2024 British military thinking appears to have been the idea of a "pre-war generation", the idea that events in the first quarter of the 21st century observe more of a pattern of military escalation towards war, rather than de-escalation after it.

🧵

This raised initial concerns about the return of some form of the draft, which is somewhat of a red herring; I think that's not what 'whole-of-society' participation in a society on pre-war footing really means.

This is a key piece of what’s going on that I think more people should put together into summaries and pictures of the world

What you're looking at here is so big as to be indistinguishable from a concerted information war effort by something/someone efficacious and powerful
🧵 To the extent that a meme can comprise a threat signal, this is a big one.

Consider what happened to Clinton in '16 or Fauci in '20: you cannot mention their names today with some people, without hearing (successful) disinformation campaigns that have taken root in their beliefs

Zelensky is actually the highest-profile world leader who has ever stood up to Trump.

Drop the frame of evaluating the damage to our country, or analyzing how bad Trump's actions are, for just a moment, and sort of step back and see it from Zelensky's position.

(🧵)

https://twitter.com/Acyn/status/1895528700894195971

Zelensky is the leader of a country at war which is highly dependent upon foreign aid for its survival.

His popularity indexes with how much aid Ukraine gets, which controls Ukraine's military viability.

That is the biggest risk to Ukraine that he can control personally.

"Trump-Russia", by which people mean a variety of different ideas and explanatory theories ranging from "omg Agent Krasnov!" to "senior citizen being steamrolled by Putin", has never been about any kind of secret or non-public information.

It's because of what he's done. (🧵) In 2016, the only substantive change that the Trump campaign wanted made to the Republican Party platform was support for lethal aid to Ukraine.

npr.org/2017/12/04/568…

In English:

Listen, if we’re going to be completely honest with the Ukrainians right now, because Trump is screwing them, I want to say two things.

(🧵)

https://twitter.com/JoohnChoe/status/1892434195047215300

First, we know that there’s something wrong with Trump’s relationship with Russia. Some of us may not admit it, but almost all of us know it.

Слухайте, якщо ми зараз будемо абсолютно чесними з українцями, тому що Трамп їх накручує, я хочу сказати дві речі.

(🧵) По-перше, ми знаємо, що у відносинах Трампа з Росією щось не так. Деякі з нас, можливо, не визнають цього, але ми майже всі це знаємо.

The best outcome that I can see here is some kind of European unified military command with Zelensky in its leadership.

We'll be at odds with them on several issues like Africa, China, maybe even Russia.

But the alternatives are either capitulation now or another war later.

🧵

https://twitter.com/Mylovanov/status/1892143067332833406

Trump's otherwise-inexplicable comments regarding Zelensky's popularity make sense in this context. It is a lie so easily disproved as to be laughable.

Zelensky is actually substantially more popular than Trump, who has never had an approval rating higher than 50%.

let me get this straight

We just elected a President who put a foreign intelligence 'asset' in charge of intelligence and an abusive alcoholic in charge of defense

And they screwed up just ONE security conference - their first! - so badly that Europe is about to unite and rearm Not as in "oh *waves hand lazily* Europe is screwed" the way that people say "the West"

As in

Team Trump screwed up Munich so bad that Zelensky got up there like nuclear Charles Martel

And all those countries you hear applauding *agreed*

https://x.com/Mylovanov/status/1890730475238408608

OK, so people overseas (Ukrainians especially) might not get this

Vice President Vance is out there today, talking about recovering American "optionality" in negotiations with Russia by saber-rattling

because SecDef Hegseth screwed up so very, very badly a few days ago

1/3
You should not evaluate this as "oh wait Vance is on our side now!" or "Vance is one of the good guys!"

Look at statements Vance has made on Ukraine, Politico has a helpful summary from July of last year

There's no shortage of them and they're all bad

politico.eu/article/jd-van…

The NIH funding freeze is an interesting anti-disinfo problem

The question is "how do you explain the impact of (here we go) reduced NIH indirect-cost reimbursement for research" and make it more approachable than disinfo

I think the way to explain it is about patriotism

(🧵) So, this is about reduced funding at the end of the day so examples of NIH research that saved lives might be apropos

This is a fairly obvious answer though I don't think anyone is gonna win a Macarthur Genius Award for realizing that

In 1956, a United Airlines DC-7 was involved in a midair collision with a Lockheed L-1049 Super Constellation over the Grand Canyon, killing all 128 souls aboard. This is cited as a driving impetus behind the nationalization of American air traffic control.

🧵 I was completely ignorant of all this, this morning, I just looked this up; but when you read about it, you can kind of see why this led to a nationalized air traffic control service.

It starts from just asking 'why' - the 'five whys' exercise, really.

The odds that we go to some kind of incredibly stupid war with a NATO ally and partner, Denmark, over Greenland, increases from "negligible" to "non-negligible" because our country just made an abusive, vapid, Deus-Vult-tattoo-having vetbro talkshow host into our SecDef

🧵 The odds of nuclear weapons use within the next four years goes up, because consultation with SecDef is supposed to be a check on the President's authorization of nuclear launch, and it is laughable to think Hegseth will serve as any kind of check to Trump

https://x.com/JoohnChoe/status/1856749784847307192

So here's the deal with Facebook's new fact check & hate speech rules.

Let me explain who I am: from January to July of 2021, starting with the insurrection - actually, because of it - I co-led a team that deplatformed extremists for Facebook. These are our numbers.

🧵 Our data is the subject of an SEC whistleblower complaint filed with the help of @wbaidlaw. This is why I can talk about it.

whistlebloweraid.org/new-disclosure…

(🧵) One assumption about disinformation that needs revision is the idea that older voters are more prone to believe disinformation.

Not only does new empirical work suggests this is no longer the case, other factors that usually determine the outcome of elections more than disinformation appear to be in question now - like who raises more money, Trump actually raised less than Harris despite running his campaign for several times longer.

In fact, if you look at the last few elections, what seems to happen is that whenever the economy is good, people elect a Republican President, and whenever it's bad, they elect a Democratic one. In addition, a picture of what predisposes people to believe in disinfo/misinfo, as well as where they get that from, starts to illustrate what policy debaters might call "harms" - like, a clear picture of a (hopefully) addressable problem.

I hypothesized that disinformation belief was like having a disease that you never knew you had, until a stressor in your environment brought it out - a diathesis-stress phenomenon

This recent study gives some weight to that theory

If you can stand to be clinical about things - which one needs to for survival purposes, though I understand if some people aren't there yet emotionally - this is an interesting equation we're seeing as far as recess appointments.

A thread (🧵) First, let me answer the dumb questions if you're just, like, afraid to ask or not from here; this is actually something AI is pretty decent for

Dumb questions, that is

A really interesting filter to understand the '24 election that I haven't seen people use is the Ukraine aid bill fight, which turned into the Lankford/Sinema/Murphy immigration bill fight.

From November 2023 - this time last year, actually - to April of 2024, when Johnson finally caved and passed the exact same Ukraine aid bill he'd been holding out for an immigration deal on, it seemed insane to outside observers that one House Representative from Louisiana could hold up the entire country's foreign policy.
🧵
The Ukraine aid bill fight, and the utter disaster caused by how long it took, exposed three flaws in the American system, I'd argue:

1. hyper-partisan, "tribal" politics where no matter what, your team must win, even if it means starving Ukraine of aid for months, or failing to act on a "border invasion" that you yourself hyped up the urgency of for months,

2. thorough-going corruption and 'infestation' by domestic & foreign money - in Johnson's case, what people don't realize about the American Ethane matter is that American Ethane gave money to a lot of Louisiana Republicans.

That is, one of the reasons why it's fallacious bordering on silly to insist that American Ethane proves Johnson was manipulated to kill Ukraine aid, is that it was years before he became Speaker - and while everyone around Johnson was also paid, they didn't play the same role in killing Ukraine aid.

Johnson is 'exonerated', in other words, by the sheer, banal commonness of taking Russian money

Went for a walk with mom, talked about what I'm going to do now that the election's over.

She said, remember Phil? Phil is a Trump supporter my stepfather knew. I wonder how he's doing, she said.

Phil is, as I recall, a paradox; he's both unabashedly racist and willing to believe in whatever bad guy Trump pointed him towards, he's also someone who's been there at hard moments for our family.

(🧵) So I said, I'd bet he's pretty happy right now. He's probably cheering and feels like he was right all along. It's like this joke about this political party, it's called the Leopard Eating Faces party, right? And everyone votes for it because...

Because no one thinks the leopard will ever eat their face, mom said.

Exactly, I said. Phil is going to realize at some point that the leopard is going to eat his face, and you know what I realized? Why is it my job to stop that?

Sure, OK, let's say America is an empire on the decline.

There's plus sides to that though. It's not as simple as all that.

One, we're in an increasingly interconnected era when being hegemon from behind the barrel of a nuclear gun pointed at the head of the world itself really makes us more of a target than anything beneficial.

We had Trump on the trigger of that gun for four years. We know that he actually contemplated nuking North Korea in his first term thanks to Mark Kelly.
🧵 From a national priorities point of view, I'm actually OK with us taking on a more sustainable role in world affairs than "omnipotent world police subject to occasional fits of nuclear fascism".

You wanna call that "imperial decline", fine by me. I'll call it "saner foreign policy" and everybody's happy
nbcnews.com/politics/donal…

I think I've seen enough people asking the question, and gotten enough direct messages asking about it, that it's time to bring this one back out.

OK, folks, settle in.

It's time for the "I Think I Want To Get A Gun" thread.

(🧵) I'm not going to tell you to do that or not to do that. For starters, I don't think I'm going to be able to stop you.

Also, I don't know what kind of situation you're in, and situations that people get into stopped being predictable around, say, 2020.

I wouldn't arrogate to myself the role to dictate what's right for you, but I would counsel you to consider a few basic statistical facts, right off the bat:

Realize, your gun is significantly more likely to be used in a suicide or an accident than it is to be used in a "good shoot". Handgun ownership is associated with drastically heightened suicide risk, especially in men; and the vast majority of suicide attempts are fatal.

If you're having trouble, or need to talk to someone, call or text 988 - that's the national suicide hotline.

Merely owning a gun is defying the laws of statistical gravity; gravity has this way of catching up to you and turning you into a statistic.

You ever been shot? I have.

It taught me something about courage, and about sudden, unexpected events I'll tell you.

See, here's the thing about thinking things through while you're in pain and think you're about to die: it's really hard. Even (I suspect) 2+2 math is hard.

🧵 Another thing a lot of people don't realize is that although small-arms ammo like .223 REM/5.56mm NATO can cause severe cavitation injuries, in other cases it's surprisingly non-lethal.

Everyone expects from movies that when you're shot, you die. That's not always true.

Let me piggyback on this excellent thread by pointing out something that should really shape more voting decisions than it does

You may think as a male voter "abortion is messy and religious, I don't know if I should vote on it"

OK then let's talk social indicators like IMR
🧵

https://twitter.com/Info_Rosalie/status/1852921202567688416

There is, I want to emphasize again, absolutely nothing mystical, special or nefarious here.

What I am saying is, if you are trying to figure people out, a good place to start in characterizing the place you are dealing with is social indicators like infant mortality rate.